Dreams Are the Food the Soul Must Have to Survive

I'm trying to lighten my load a little every day in a lot of different ways.  I'm making lists of things that I need to do and marking them "DONE!"  I'm cleaning out my home work space (again - an on-going job), and making some organizational changes to my office space.

I'm working on changing my way of thinking about things too.  When I need something, I ask myself if I already have it, or is there something that I might use instead of what I have in mind.

I'm cleaning out my books, too, a little every few days.  It's hard to part with them; I know I'll read them some day, right?

Today I came across a book of pithy sayings that I accumulated in a journal in college. One of the pieces has held me like no other and today I want to share it with you.  I've tried over the years to find the original source of the piece but can't. I do know that it was written by Brad Nilles and came from a book called Dreams From the Road. I hope you enjoy it.

Dreams are the food the soul must have to survive.  We all have our dreams; some of them shared, some of them secret, and some of them unbelievable.  Part of growing up is getting ready to share the responsibility of the world.  And to accomplish this, we must have hope based on a clear idea of what the world and life have to offer.  Probably the most difficult lesson the road teaches us is that life is often less, sometimes more, but almost always different from what you thought it was before you took a first-hand look.  You see beauty and sadness and insanity that were in front of you all along, but you never got around to noticing them. And in those new realizations, new pains, and new joys, you see yourself--differently, but in a way that you must accept, because you find that you are the center of it all.  You and everything you see in the world blend together into a dream that is yourself.

What really happened

“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” ~ John Lennon

We have spent the last two months burning up the highway to a place called Vandemere. We have been inside and out of a house there. We've been thinking about buying the house and moving there permanently. The property is beautiful. The house was built by the present owner - "Two nails in the whole house," he said - and is welcoming and perfectly sited on the eleven acres. A photographer's dream, his creek a portal to the inner banks.

My mind churned non-stop with the possibilities: writing workshops, photography classes, music festivals, weekends with the house full of friends and family and fellow learners. Gardening, exploring the waterways, pets and chickens. Self-sufficiency with a little belt-tightening. Family holidays with grandkids running the property and swimming from the pier. A legacy home place for our children.

I began organizing and cleaning out my house. Not packing exactly, but thinking in terms of what we would need if we moved there. Games, books, videos. The furniture that would look good in this room or that. I put all my photographs and the children's papers and family memorabilia in containers for storage (the area is prone to flooding). I dreamed some more.

And then, and then, we decided the time wasn't right for this kind of bold move. We need to stay where we are for a while longer.

I won't say I haven't mourned the decision. But a strange thing happened in the midst of the mourning: I realized that all the things I thought of doing there I can do right where I am. Although I won't wake up and walk out the pier with my coffee, I can sit on my deck, private with lush greenery, and listen to the morning chatter of the birds. I can open my windows at night and hear the toads' chorus. I can have workshops and house concerts, rooms full of friends and family. Our garden is in and coming up beautifully.

I realize that my dreams cannot be contained by a place. I still might want to move to Vandemere some day, or some place like it, but I'm going to keep on living right where I am for now. Stay tuned...you know you'll be a part of my next adventures!

Birds

We do quite a bit of traveling down I-40, and lately the vultures have been out in force. I don't think I'm just noticing them more either - there are more of them around. Maybe it's a seasonal thing.

They must have been getting to my subconscious, though, because last night I dreamed that hundreds of them were circling around my husband and me as we rode in an open boat/vehicle. One swooped in very close--I could see how beautiful it was before it flew away. Then one of them dropped a very large, round white liquid on my leg which was easily pushed away.

Later in the dream, we were riding in said vehicle and a bright red, fuzzy, Sesame Street type bird attached itself to my head and would not let go. My husband finally pulled it away as it loudly complained. It then sat on the outside of the vehicle with its things (I can't remember what it had with it but a radio might have been one of the items.)

I was thinking about this driving to work and a crow took a dive at my windshield so aggressively that I had to put on the brakes to keep from hitting it. As I was recovering from that I looked over and saw two geese floating (not flapping) perfectly in sync toward the Baptist church parking lot.

Something's going on with me and the birds.